[The Old Groaner] Yet another roadside attraction

As we moved through town, I tired of having a sister, and so promoted Heidi to be my daughter, not an unreasonable proposition as I indeed have a daughter of similar age, a daughter conceived post my teens. By the time we reached home by taxi, I had promoted poor Heidi to the role of “wife No. 2, me a Christian!” And so it was that she was thus established in the valley for the duration of her stay. Nobody balked at the idea that Christians may have more than one wife -- if the rumor goes national, then I apologize.

Of course, being the O.G.’s wife No. 2 did nothing to dissuade the locals from their usual lechery, and that became most apparent when she volunteered to undertake some manual work out at the front of the house, work which involved rocks, a shovel and a wheel-barrow. (As I said -- she is German.) I was at the office window working, but as usual I would look up at the sounds of voices, cars slowing or stopping and more than anything else, the sound of car doors slamming. I did very little work that morning.

At least half the passing cars would slow or stop and converse with No. 2. Where was she from? How old was she? How many children? Perhaps half a dozen men parked their cars and alighted to talk at length with No. 2, and two kind gentlemen, an hour or so apart, removed their jackets and got stuck into the work. I estimate that between them they made up for all the time that Heidi had spent talking to other suitors. One of the volunteer laborers promised to drop in during the coming week with a variety of presents; he will be disappointed as yesterday Heidi returned to her home and three kids in Germany.

We have had a similar problem in the past, though not involving females. Our best worker when we employ workers just happens to be about the most popular man in the valley. He is called Adil but is widely known as “Wheels.” We have no idea why.

When Wheels is working out back or indoors, we get a full day’s hard work from him, but when he works at the front of the house or on the road, then a nominal 10 hours is probably reduced to an effective three hours. Everyone who passes stops for a chat, and the chats can last from as little as five minutes to as much as an hour.

If one of the Nuris has no work in his fields or in the mountains, he will spend the whole day at our site, kicking stones and talking to Wheels. Of course, we are obliged to keep them all happy with a constant supply of tea, and should any other villager call by at tea time, then he will also expect a wet.

I have to stress that Wheels is a bull of a worker and would tear down a mountain if we were to ask, but with so much crack to be had with the lads, the work does tend to come in very short bursts.

So far we have only talked about the result of villagers interrupting our workers, not tourists. Heidi was not working out front during the season, and in any case, tourists would not know that she was the O.G.’s spare wife so we are not missing anything. When Wheels is working out front, things liven up significantly. He speaks very little English but enough to have absolutely no qualms about opening a conversation with tourists who may be walking by. We are not sure quite how he strikes up his conversation, but pretty soon he obviously gets around to informing the tourists that expats live in the quaint stone cottage and that they always welcome visitors and serve free drinks!

So it is that Wheels ushers an average of half a dozen tourists of various nationalities onto our front terrace every day. If Wheels has attendant village visitors, then they may desert the work site in order to supervise our entertainment of the guests; the villagers of course expecting their share of the beer or Cola. We end up doing amounts of our own work that are quite proportional to the amount done by dear Wheels out on the road.

Yes, of course we thought of leaving the house in order to avoid the impromptu tourist parties, but the idea resulted in parties starting and continuing in our absence. We can trust our workers absolutely not to abuse the ever-open drinks fridge for their own refreshment. They usually restrict themselves to water, and we have to practically force them to drink Cola; however, they do become a little over-generous when it comes to quenching the thirst of tourists. Before we gave up the ploy of leaving the house, we twice returned to find a party in full swing. The second occasion had two tourist groups, comprising four Americans and two Russians singing together in passable harmony, accompanied by a villager on Saz and one of the Americans on my guitar. I’m thinking of proposing Wheels for the Nobel Peace Prize.